Invest Nova Scotia is looking for early-stage tech companies to take part in Accelerate, its milestone-based program that helps Nova Scotia founders get investment-ready.
The program is delivered virtually over five months. Organizers are looking for startups with proprietary tech, customer-validated solutions and the potential to scale globally.
Participating companies each receive up to $40,000 in non-dilutive, non-repayable funding to address key technical and business milestones.
Companies are eligible for participation in one cohort of the program which focuses on five sectors:
- Agriculture Tech: startups addressing global food production challenges while reducing dependency on fossil fuels or petrochemicals;
- Clean Tech: startups addressing climate change and clean air, water and soil;
- Health Tech: startups developing new therapeutics, medical devices or digital health technologies solving large unmet healthcare needs;
- Ocean Tech: startups developing solutions in ocean health, fisheries and aquaculture, offshore energy, shipborne technologies, and marine bioresources;
- And software: startups working on solutions leveraging artificial intelligence, computer vision, blockchain, or data network effects to solve large unmet market needs.
The program also offers meetings with advisors, workshops on a variety of investment-readiness topics, and a perks program offering discounts to 100+ vendors such as Hubspot, Google Cloud, Zoom, and Slack.
Applicants must be a Nova Scotia-registered business in good standing, have a permanent establishment, and have most of the workforce and the majority of senior leadership residing in Nova Scotia. They must have less than $1 million in cumulative sales and less than $250,000 in equity investment (including convertible debt) raised to date.
Applications are due by July 22 at 5PM AT. The program begins October 1, 2025.
Invest Nova Scotia investment portfolio companies are ineligible.
Learn more and apply here.
